As they topped the staircase, two of the balaclava-masked SEALs poked their weapons over the ledge. They swept their muzzles side to side across the flat landing. They carefully peered down the wide-open hallway that ran the length of the upstairs area. Two more men passed the first pair and took opposite kneeling positions at the top of the stairs.
Six identical doors lined the hallway, three to the left, two to the right and one at the end, directly facing the stairway. Presumably, three were bedrooms, one was a bathroom, and one was a linen closet. Which was which had to be determined the old-fashioned way. They would need to open each, one at a time.
Forester and Beckwith passed the two pairs of SEALs in a fast, crouching walk.
The first two men who had reached the top, Bell and Stingle, stayed where they were to guard the approach from below and keep an eye on the doors down each side of the hallway. The others started with the nearest door on the left.
They tensed, took a deep breath, and paced their heart rate. Forester put his hand on the knob and slowly twisted. He shoved the door open and Beckwith burst in, Forester right behind him. It was a small bedroom with a window at the back, and an empty closet with a broken door that hung open on a twisted hinge. A bed and a small nightstand were the only objects in the still room. No people.
“Room one clear,” Forester whispered into his microphone.
The two men backed out. Philips and Miller swung open the next door, which turned out to be a linen closet with no place to hide a man.
“Room two clear,” uttered one of the men.
Forester and Beckwith passed them and took the door across the hall to the right. They got on either side. Philips and Miller covered them across the hall as Beckwith put his hand on the doorknob.
A sound like wood and metal clacking together came from the end of the hall. Stingle shouted from the stairwell. “On the left! Freeze!”
Something small, dark, and hard thumped heavily at the top of the staircase, bounced into the air, and halted on the carpet between the six SEALs.
“Grenade!”
Bell sprung forward and wrapped his body snugly around the baseball-sized mass of deadly steel. A muffled explosion thumped through the house. A bright flash of light shot out from under Bell’s body. Beckwith turned and fired two short bursts in the direction of the door. From the room, a man let out a scream, followed by a heavy thud.
“Medic! Get the medic up here!”
Stingle immediately turned Bell onto his back and started to pull off his body armor when he realized there was no need. Bell’s death-dulled eyes stared blankly into space. Blood ran in streams from the open armholes of his vest and out of his mouth and nose. The Mormon boy from Utah was going to get the hero’s funeral that would make his mother proud.
Forester and Beckwith kicked in the nearest door while Philips and Miller rushed the end of the hall. The room on the right was another empty bedroom, and they quickly cleared it then rushed to the room from which the grenade had come. Philips and Miller had already entered and found the body of a dark-skinned Caucasian man lying facedown in a pool of blood on the floor next to a bed. He held a pistol in one hand. Another hand grenade, pin still in place, lay on the floor nearby. A metal box with an electronic keypad lay on the bed. It looked like a land mine. They cleared that room and went to the last one at the end of the hall.
Forester put his hand on the doorknob. The others tensed up. A dozen holes suddenly appeared in the wooden door and nearby Sheetrock as a burst of gunfire rang out from inside the room. Splintered bits of wood from the door stung the men’s faces, and a shard of wood cut into Forester’s left arm through a gap in his armored vest just below the shoulder. Miller grunted and stumbled backwards as one of the rounds struck him full in the chest. It crunched into his armored vest, sending him backwards, and knocked the wind out of him. He landed flat on his butt.
Lucky for him, the heavy wooden door had slowed the bullet enough that by the time it hit the vest, it was rendered non-lethal. His eyes rolled as he coughed and gasped for air, his lungs shocked by the impact. The medic left the dead body of Bell and sprinted across the hall to Miller, who would say later that it felt like he had been hit with a small Buick.
Beckwith fired a pair of three-round bursts through the Sheetrock wall into the room, then kicked the door open. He rushed in, followed by Forrester and Philips. A blond-haired, blue-eyed man stared back at them. He was mostly naked, except for a pair of colorful boxer shorts. A vial of the chemical was gripped in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Blood soaked through the cloth of his boxer shorts near the hip and ran in thick, red rivulets down his right thigh. The man looked like he could have been taken out of a Nazi propaganda poster, except that now he had a crazed look in his eyes as he backed slowly toward the window.
Beckwith faced him, weapon raised. “All right, buddy, put down your weapon and the vial. Put them down gently on the bed.”
“You are too late!” Adem Jankovic’s Kosovar accent was evident. A mix of hatred and fear quivered in his voice. “You were too late
